The Original Ghost Rider, Volume 1 by Gardner FoxMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Original Ghost Rider Volume 1 collects Ghost Rider 1-5 plus stories from Tim Holt, published by Magazine Enterprises in the late 1940s.
I was running low on Western comics and one of my guys on Twitter recommended this. I gave it a shot, not really knowing what to expect.
The Ghost Rider is US Marshal Rex Fury. After falling down The Devil's Sink, Rex Fury awakes in limbo and learns great skills from various dead Western figures, emerging to fight injustice as... The Ghost Rider!
Rex Fury and his offensive Chinese stereotype sidekick Sing Song go through standard Western adventures involving corrupt lawmen, claim jumpers, hostile Indians, and things of that nature. The stories are easily digestible at 8-10 pages apiece and somewhat goofy in the way that most comics from the 1940s are, clearly geared toward kids and not middle age guys wolfing them down one after another.
Dastardly Dick Ayers handles the art chores aside from some dynamite Frank Frazetta covers. Old Dick had some chops when he wasn't forced to draw super heroes in a Jack Kirby style. His Ghost Rider looks great and he's good Western scenery, locomotives, and horse after God damn horse. I think a lot of artists probably breathed a sigh of relief when the genre died so they wouldn't have to draw so many damn horses.
I really like the taste of the Ghost Rider I had hear. The stories harken back to the Lone Ranger stories I watched on TV before school and the Ghost Rider is a striking figure. Later stories feature horror elements so I'm definitely down with that. Sadly, this is the only volume Canton Street Press has put out to date so I'll have to settle for public domain reprints of the rest.
Marvel hi-jacked the Western Ghost Rider character when the trademark allegedly lapsed when Magazine Enterprises went out of business but I have no idea how their version compares, although they got Dick Ayers back for it. That's something, I guess.
Four out of five stars. There's a Ghost Rider shaped hole in my life now.
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